Horacio Gutierrez, vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing for Microsoft, said in a statement that the company filed the suit on July 30 “after making repeated attempts during the past several years to engage in meaningful licensing discussions with Primax”.

The dispute relates to Microsoft’s U2, Tilt Wheel and Magnifier technologies. Microsoft says that Primex, a Taiwan-based company, is selling computer mice that infringe on this technology under the names Dynex and Rocketfish in the US.

Simon Hwang, director of the IP and legal department at Primax, told Managing IP that he was surprised by Microsoft’s decision to file at the ITC, as the company had only been involved in negotiations over a hardware technology licensing programme.

“We have not entered into any specific patent licensing discussions, because Microsoft has never provided any particular patent numbers or documents,” he said. He added that Primax was still open to resolving the dispute through negotiation.

In the same statement Gutierrez said Microsoft had “an open intellectual property licensing policy, but in situations such as this, in which a reasonable licensing agreement cannot be reached despite our best efforts, we have no choice but to pursue legal action to protect our innovations.”

The April edition of Managing IP magazine includes an interview with Horacio Gutierrez.